We can always count on the New York Post for its pithy headlines, like the one early this morning that proclaimed, "Rape-monster cop finally admits it." The "rape-monster cop" in question is the now-infamous former-NYPD officer Michael Pena, and the "it" is the rape of a schoolteacher at gunpoint last August. Pena struck a plea deal that will ensure his victim doesn't have to undergo a re-trial for two counts of predatory assault charges that the jury had been unable to agree on.

Michael Pena, the former New York City cop who allegedly raped a woman at gunpoint in an alleyway…
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The Postnotes, however, that Pena's plea earned him a 10-year prison sentence, far less than the concurrent 75-to-life sentence he received after being convicted of oral and anal sodomy. When Pena appeals, defense attorney Ephraim Savitt hopes that the lower 10-year sentence will catch the attention of appellate judges and help reduce Pena's much longer sentence. Savitt explained the strategy thusly:

The strategy is to knock down the punishment time. This low benchmark can't hurt. Plus that he has now accepted responsibility - and that prosecutors had originally offered him 20 years to life if he'd pled guilty and not gone to trial.

Pena's appeal will try to make the case that, due to his eventual cooperation and the precedent set by his most recent 10-year sentence, he only really deserves about 10 years behind bars total. The creaky wheels of justice having now been set into laborious motion, all we can do is wait and hope that Savitt's optimism is just a lawyerly way of saying, "It's worth a shot."